The first qualifying prelim of the series and also the first game to feature the new rules: 18 points for a nine-letter word and needing to get within ten to score on the numbers game.

The seedings for this series appear to be based on a combination of most wins, average winning score and some kind of tweaking based on other knowledge (like Scrabble skill level, perhaps). David was seeded 16th as he was the highest-scoring loser of the series (two contestants who won a game didn’t return for the finals: Geoffrey Weeks and Hugh Fraser).